The timeout is a timeout, but it seems to be a little better than the Central Army.

Because there was a problem with the Central Army just by opening the allocation.

A group of soldiers in the Baoyi Battalion of the Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to go out to fight, and when the Shangguan was coerced, they abandoned the camp in a hurry.

According to later statistics, as many as 100 soldiers escaped, and only 13 were captured.

Although the matter was suppressed by Niu Lunbao and not reported, and the impact was controlled to a minimum, it still reached Zu Yingyuan's side.

To this, he just smiled.

Because he knows that the black hand of Devil Six has been activated.

The news that the Qing army was about to attack Huangzhou on a large scale actually leaked as early as the first day of the opening of the Huguang Green Battalion, so Zu Yingyuan estimated that the Xinghan army in Huangzhou would definitely organize a large-scale blocking battle with Huang'ancheng as the center.

You must know that Huang'an is the northernmost gateway of Huangzhou City, once the Qing army occupies this place, it can either go south to directly attack Huangzhou City, or it can go east to sweep the counties under the jurisdiction of Huangzhou Prefecture and completely isolate Huangzhou City.

Theoretically, even if Huangzhou City could not be captured, as long as the defenders in the city could not dare to come out, it would also cut off the connection between Wuchang and Huangzhou and Jiujiang in the east.

Therefore, Zu Yingyuan estimated that a vicious battle could not be avoided.

How to preserve strength in this vicious battle and send away the "friendly forces" one by one as much as possible is not a small project.

But what Zu Yingyuan didn't expect was that Huang An turned out to be an empty city!

The Xinghan army completely abandoned the city.

Although he didn't know why the Xinghan army did not defend Huang'an, Zu Yingyuan still asked the soldiers to set off a fire gun outside the city, and fired a few cannons, and then reported the victory to the co-organizer of the university in a decent manner.

Knowing that Huang An had fallen, Niu Lun Bao was overjoyed and personally led the Yuanmingyuan Guard Barracks under his command to Huang'an, and two days later the other two Eight Banners Central Army also arrived at the front line of Huang'an.

One is a 4,000-strong battalion of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the other is a 3,000-strong firearms battalion.

The Interior Affairs Bureau's Baoyi Banner is also known as the "Shangsanqi Baoyi Guarding Military Camp", although it is a Baoyi origin, but it is also subordinate to the Central Army of the Eight Banners, and the battalion soldiers are selected in the yellow, yellow, and white three banners of the coat vest.

In addition to being able to ride a horse-drawn bow, the standard is that it must be a "Liao person".

That is, the ancestors of the battalion soldiers can only be Han people who returned to the Qing Dynasty during the period of Taizu Taizong.

The loyalty of such Han people in the eyes of the Qing court was even higher than that of the Eight Banners of the Meng, so when Qianlong abolished the Eight Banners of the Han Army, he also demanded that the "Han people of the original lineage" and "the Liao people be cut later".

The status of the descendants of the "Liao" under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was also higher than that of the Han army and the Mongols, and even the lower five banners of Manchuria were not as high.

Since the Kangxi Dynasty of the Holy Ancestor, about one-fifth of the important ministers and governors from Baoyi were born, which shows that the imperial court attaches great importance to the "Liao people".

The commander of the Manchurian Zhenghuang Banner who commanded the Baoyi Battalion of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the commander of the Yellow Banner of Manchuria, was the great-grandfather of Maleji, the first champion of Manchuria and the governor of Liangjiang.

The predecessor of the firearms battalion was the Eight Banners soldiers stationed in Suiyan, and later entered Beijing to quell the chaos by secret order, and was organized into Beijing under the mediation of Prince Rui, who was then the governor of Jiumen, and the whole battalion was reorganized into a firearms battalion.

The managing minister is the former Suiyuan garrison Eight Banners Commander Yierden.

After the Qing troops of various departments arrived at the assembly area one after another, Niu Lunbao held a pre-military meeting as a co-organizer of the university who specialized in military aircraft.

The content of the meeting mainly focused on how to capture Huangzhou City.

Zu Yingyuan proposed to divide his troops into two routes, attacking Macheng all the way and then marching to Luotian, and then turning southwest to attack Huangzhou City.

One route was Huang'an, which went directly south to attack Huangzhou.

In this way, first, it can disperse the thief army in Huangzhou; Second, it can encircle Huangzhou from east to west to reduce the difficulty of siege.

However, the Minister of the Protector of the Old Summer Palace, Sonomu Tseling, thought that Macheng should be captured first, because according to detailed research, it was found that there was a division and a brigade of thieves stationed in Macheng, with 35,000 thieves, and it was the second most important town in Huangzhou after Huangzhou City.

If it cannot be uprooted in one fell swoop, the various units of the thief army east of Macheng will inevitably rush in, which will not only trap the Qing army in Macheng, but also pose a flank threat to the Qing army attacking Huangzhou in the south.

Badama and Ilden did not have a clear opinion on how to fight, anyway, the military order was carried out.

In the end, Niu Lunbao adopted Sonomu Tsering's opinion, and ordered Sonomu Tseling to command the Yuanmingyuan guards, Badama to command the Baoyi Battalion, and nearly 20,000 soldiers and horses with the main force of the Huguang Green Battalion to attack Macheng.

The firearms battalion was stationed on the front line of Taohua Town to prevent the Huangzhou thief army from coming to aid Macheng, and at the same time to ensure the safety of the Qing army's grain route.

Xu is the slow progress of the Huguang Green Camp in the previous period, which made the co-organizers dissatisfied, and he actually personally sat in the Huguang Green Camp to supervise the march.

For this co-organizer scholar who rode on his head like an airborne, Zu Yingyuan was secretly dissatisfied, but he had to make an appearance of obedience on the surface, and mobilized the main forces of the two towns of Xindasu and Maderi to cooperate with the Central Army of the Eight Banners to launch an offensive against Macheng.

In the face of the Qing army's large-scale attack, the Xinghan army guarding Macheng did not abandon the defense as easily as giving up Huang'an, but relied on the Qing artillery captured earlier to hold on to the city.

The battle was extremely fierce, and all the units of the Qing army failed to take it after taking turns to attack fiercely, and even the Huguang Green Battalion also lost more than 200 people.

From the mouths of the people who fled out of the city before, I learned that the main general of the thief army guarding Macheng was named Jiang Qing'an, who was not a native of Hubei, but a thief general who ran out of Xiaojinchuan.

There are more than 4,000 people under Jiang Qing'an's command, and the most capable of fighting is a unit called the Loyal Battalion, with only more than 600 soldiers, but all of them are fifteen or sixteen-year-old teenagers, including orphans from Jinchuan and orphans adopted by Jiang Qing'an after entering Huguang.

"Camp Loyalty?"

Zu Yingyuan frowned, when he was a child, he read some books about the Ming Dynasty at home, one of which said that the rest of Li Zicheng's later surrendered to the Ming Dynasty and was formed as a loyal battalion, and he has been working against the Qing soldiers until the third year of Kangxi, the rest of the Ming army was completely wiped out.

Obviously, the thief named Jiang Qing'an in Macheng named the pro-soldier camp "Loyal Battalion", which has something to do with the loyal battalion of the Ming army.

Thinking of this, Zu Yingyuan had the heart to persuade Jiang Qing'an to surrender, so as to preserve this anti-Qing force.

After all, the defenders of the city only had 4,000 men, and the besieging Qing army was more than five times as large as them, and the firearms were far superior to those in the city.

Don't look at the strong defense in the city now, repeatedly repelling the attacks of the Qing army, but as long as there are no reinforcements, it is only a matter of time before the Qing army breaks the city.

When he was worried about how to persuade him to surrender, Badama, the minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, took the lead and suggested to the co-organizers that he could surrender to the city.

Badama's meaning is that as long as the thieves in the city are willing to surrender, they can be given the rank of general and above, and their subordinates can also be retained.

It was probably influenced by the peace policy pursued by the great shogun Wang Qianzhen.

Zu Yingyuan also took advantage of the situation and said: "The lower officials also have this intention, if the scholars agree to persuade them to surrender, the lower officials can send people into the city to persuade them." ”

Other generals also echoed one after another, not because they cherished talents like Zu Yingyuan, nor did they want to preserve any anti-Qing forces, but they really gave the thieves in the city a headache.

Therefore, it is better not to fight if you can.

Unexpectedly, the co-organizer of the university changed color and shouted angrily: "What do you know! The one who descends, the one who is credible! Thieves and soldiers, cunning by nature, do a lot of evil, are repeated, today I am most likely forced to be at a disadvantage, he will inevitably betray me again if he is not at a disadvantage, this kind of thief should be punished, how can he be given a chance to repeat! ”

Niu Lunbao did not agree to persuade the thieves to surrender, and took the Dingxi general Wen Fu as an example of the victimization of the thieves, described the harmfulness of the thieves, and insisted on attacking Macheng to slaughter the thieves in order to boost the army's prestige.

Zu Yingyuan didn't like to hear this, because he knew that the rebellion was certainly one of the reasons for the collapse of the Muguomu camp, but Wen Fu's death was definitely not to blame.

And although the other party is a co-organizer of the university, he is also the governor of Hunan and the governor of Huguang, so why are you a co-organizer of the university in front of Lao Tzu.

If you don't give face and make you lose your voice, what can you do with me?

Of course, Zu Dashou, the gray grandson, also knows how to speak, and he did not confront the co-organizers of the university in person, but only euphemistically stated that the peace policy pursued by the general Wang not only caused the internal division of the Xinghan army to fall apart, and there was an endless stream of people who came to surrender, but also allowed the Qing Dynasty to recover a number of recovered lands without much effort.

The implication is that the benefits of persuasion are greatly dropped.

Don't get out of the way.

The co-organizer suddenly sneered: "As far as this official knows, the reason why Prince Rui is trying his best to recruit thieves is just to cherish each other. ”

Well?

The generals in the military tent beat in unison: what do you mean?